Kingdom of Ashdale
The Kingdom of Ashdale, or KASH, is a clan in the World 103 Community. It is led by King Bowie. History ''-Written mainly from the perspective of Wobble'' Foundation and Early Days KASH was officially founded on the 28th of February 2014 under the name Obscure Legion. It was led by Mytikas and followed a Zarosian-Roman theme. The original leadership structure was composed of a leader, three advisory Sages and four departments; Events, Citadel, War and Diplomacy. Within the first few days, Obscure Legion had built a decent base of leadership, including figures such as Vaaris Ignis, Leopold, Xantora, Paco and Wobble. Lucien Ravendwel also joined in the early stages of the clan. Despite a promising start, Mytikas resigned as clan leader and handed over to Paco, who considered disbanding the clan. Vaaris Ignis then stepped in and took over as leader, a position that he would hold for around a year. Vaaris The ascendancy of Vaaris Ignis marked the start of what is generally regarded as one of the best periods of KASH's early history. In terms of leadership structure, he kept with the original format and the number of clan members steadily increased. Amongst notable figures who joined in the early stages of Vaaris' reign are Er, Megawhale and Wise. It is worth noting that there aren't a lot of specific records for this period of KASH history, but various changes were put in place by the leadership team regarding different aspects of the clan. For example, the sage positions were removed and would later be replaced by two advisory positions. A constitution draft was also written up and foundations of a ranking system were put in place. Further to this, many felt that the name Obscure Legion was not POC-style enough, so the clan joined the World 31 POC Community and their name was changed to the Empire of Freneskae, making sure to keep to the Zarosian theme. This name was short-lived, however, with the indecisive membership opting to transition to a more democratic sounding theme. The original idea was to change into the Republic of Freneskae, but this would not fit within the clan character limit so the clan settled with the Republic of Ghorrock in order to keep with the Zarosian theme once again. Unsurprisingly, members were still unhappy with the clan name and this indecisiveness was picked up by other POC clan leaders such as Burgoyne and Ryanc. The reason this time seemed to be that people just did not like the sound of the clan name, and in particular the acronym of RoG. In a clan meeting taking place in the downstairs of Paco's RuneScape house, the leadership team decided to move away from the Zarosian theme and call themselves the Kingdom of Ashdale, changing their colours to blue and gold. They swore that this name would never be changed again after the farcical period of alterations. Diplomatic Relations and War with Kingdom of Zaros Elsewhere in the POC world, the aforementioned Burgoyne had returned to RuneScape and had been part of a leadership coup against the owner of a Fremennik clan. The influence he gained from this gave him the leverage needed to reform the Kingdom of Zaros with a solid base of players to begin with. At around the same time as Burgoyne's actions, Vaaris and Paco began a conflict with each other over an event which happened ages before in their old clan, Empire of Swords. As a result of this, Paco, the then-deputy owner, left KASH to create his own clan: The Empire of Prifddinas. A generally accepted theory at the time was that Paco created the clan with the intention of warring KASH for revenge over Vaaris, however this is unconfirmed. Both the Kingdom of Zaros and Empire of Prifddinas make recruitment gains and also both join the World 31 Community alongside KASH and a few other clans. Burgoyne's strategy as KoZ leader was to war smaller clans for their land, which was noticed by the Kingdom of Ashdale. Eventually, Burgoyne made the decision to war a very small clan called the White Knights for their most precious piece of land, Falador. They were left with no option but to concede the land or risk humiliation via war. KASH responded to this action by declaring war on KoZ for Falador with the intention of returning it to the White Knights if won. Whilst war times and terms were undergoing agreement, KASH gained three clans as allies including a clan run by Michi and the White Knights themselves. Paco aligned the Empire of Prifddinas to the Kingdom of Zaros while they also gained another small clan as an ally. It was around this time that KASH started a huge recruitment drive in response to the war agreement. It was estimated that they gained nearly 100 members between the time the war was agreed and the time the war was actually fought. On the day of the war, after a lot of rallying from both sides, KASH ended up with an approximate pull of just less than 20 people and arrived at clan wars at around the same time as KoZ, whose pull was a fair bit less. Burgoyne was also absent from the war. However, a few minutes before the fight was about to start, EoP showed up in a line all at once to equal the number of people on both sides, with KASH having 2 or 3 people from their allied clans. The war was to be fought in a best of 3 format. In what was supposed to be the first round of the war, KASH's side took the more offensive approach and attacked the very mage-heavy base of the opposite side. Their effort was very uncoordinated, however, and many stragglers were piled and taken down by ice barrage, leaving too few people to recover the round. KoZ's side were declared winners, but due to most of their team using legacy combat the round was nulled as EoC combat was agreed upon in the war terms. Despite the result being overturned, KASH had lost a lot of confidence from the fight that had just occurred. Lucien Ravendwel, their war leader at the time, decided to hand over the position of war-caller to his deputy, Brama. This is hailed as Lucien's most significant and yet completely insignificant point in his entire KASH stint, and was seen as a very unfavourable move. In the official first round of the war, Brama led KASH forces into the arena. They were far more coordinated this time and also had the advantage of an even EoC combat field. They put the previous 'loss' behind them and managed to take a relatively comfortable victory in the first round. In the aftermath of this, at least one member of the KoZ side defected to the KASH side and another member also logged off, meaning that the second round became an even more comfortable victory for KASH and their allies. Falador was won as a land claim and returned to the White Knights as promised. Burgoyne's presence then slowly declined in the POC community and KoZ also followed this path. Wise What followed the war was a long period of positive consistency under Vaaris Ignis. Despite a phenomenon known as the "Events curse," by which the events position was filled for no longer than 5 weeks at a time for an unusually long period, KASH's general membership seemed to view the clan quite favourably. During this time the Recruitment department was added and the Citadel department was removed. Notable figures such as Tevin, Venussaur, Varahi, Zaire, Kaitlin, Laughrob, StarDrifter and Desert Spear also joined the clan at some point during this period. Eventually, after a long stint as leader of KASH, Vaaris stepped down in late 2014 according to the official forums. He was replaced by one of his deputy leaders, Wise, who was coronated at Ashdale church in what was KASH's first community coronation. The Kingdom of Ashdale, now a clan of World 42, endured drama, roleplay and real. However, under Wise there was a period of consistency as there was under Vaaris. He focused more on roleplay aspects in the clan, implementing a Knights and Dames system for citizen members. He also built on the concept of Houses and, at one point, KASH had 3 or 4 active House factions in the clan. Despite these changes, later records of POC history have revealed that many of the big names in Wise's leadership team viewed him unfavourably as he 'allowed them to get lazy' and made very little change in terms of actual governance of the clan. The ranking system that he implemented also did not gain much traction and was largely discarded. During Wise's reign as leader, Vaaris left KASH to form his own clan. Zaire Wise eventually decided to quit RuneScape to focus on real life, handing leadership of the clan to Zaire in the middle of 2015 according to the forums. Overall, his reign was shorter than Wise's, which in turn was shorter than Vaaris'. He made significant changes, however. In regards to recruitment, new members were made to fill out an official application on the KASH forum before being able to join. Furthermore, similar to the subclan system at Kingdom of Varrock, Zaire changed the leadership structure of KASH to include leaders of skilling events, PvM events, PvP events and minigames/fun events. Citizen ranks in the clan were able to join these factions based on their preferences, with roleplay aspects tied into the positions as well. However, seen as a rushed decision in hindsight, Zaire and his council made it a requirement for a member to join one of these subclans before they could rank up. This, along with the change in recruitment policy, led to a negative reception and is arguably one of the reasons, if not the reason, why Zaire eventually stepped down as leader of the clan. Kaitlin and the Michi Controversy Zaire handed the crown over to his real-life girlfriend Kaitlin after stepping down. Her reign was very short and she was reportedly reluctant to be in leadership. Having the desire to step downCategory:Clans